Disclaimer: I played the Katherine solo route where the MC stays faithful throughout the game to his wife and my review is for that path, other paths may vary a lot and may offer very different content and thus the experience may be different for other players who choose different paths.
Deliverance is a story focused game about a demon who wants to take over the world and the MC who is slowly pulled into this conflict and eventually fights the demon with the help of his loved one and friends.
I did not care too much for the supernatural story, since it's not my favorite genre, but the presentation is really good and the writing is on a top level (for VNs), so even if supernatural stories my not be your favorite genre, Deliverance still offers a good story at least and a good experience. It will keep you interested throughout the game.
But I would have preferred it if Deliverance was more about the serial killer and solving cases and not about the "demon wants to rule over the world" scenario which completely takes over eventually (once the early serial killer plot thread is resolved), but that is down to taste of course. If you like supernatural stories Deliverance will certainly deliver.
The music in the game is good too and I would recommend you play it with music enabled.
The female characters are all pretty and offer various body types and hair colors. All the females look like actual human beings, you will not find any exaggerated proportions here. The MC also looks ok, but sadly he suffers from a mild case of horse appendage.
Maybe the devs do that for animation purposes, but it feels a bit off in a game where the females look more or less realistic. It's not as bad as in various other games though. It will not completely take you out of the story here, it's just a bit ridiculous and not over the top ridiculous. The MC's face is not hidden in the game, a choice I usually prefer, it makes choosing camera angles for interactions with other characters a lot more versatile and better.
You can choose from various love interests in the game, but you start out the game with the wife of the MC: Katherine. Katherine is pretty, fun, smart, sweet, loving and a bit naughty in a sweet way. I saw no reason for the MC to ever leave her (really, she's anything a normal person would ever want) or to even cheat on her, thus she was my sole love interest in my playthrough.
The other potential love interests also look pretty, but I can only say anything about them as the MC's normal friends. And each character is pretty unique with her own personality. The characters all have some depth and are not just objects meant to conquer.
The game has both animated sex scenes and various animated story moments. The animations are fluid and look good, the sex scenes are nothing you haven't seen before, but they are good and do the job.
You will not get punished with a lack of content on the Katherine solo path, there usually are 2 or even more encounters in each chapter and it's also quite varied, at least when we talk about settings, since Katherine loves doing "it" in various places throughout the game, public park, her office, near strangers in alleys etc, you get the idea. Katherine's (sweet and fun) naughty side comes into play here. And thus not all interactions with her are in a bedroom or at home.
The game also has sharing and lesbian options for Katherine. On the sharing path men and women can have sex with her without the MC. If that's what you really want you can have it here. You can completely avoid sharing early in the game with a dialogue choice however, which is what I did. And even if sharing is enabled early on you can still opt out of sharing scenes later and avoid it.
The lesbian content is a bit awkward when you are on a faithful solo path for Katherine since it happens later in the story and while you can avoid it altogether the beginning of the scene is still triggered and you can clearly see where it will go, unless the MC tells Katherine to focus on her task.
It feels completely out of character for Katherine on the love/solo/faithful path, in my opinion, and I think this could have been handled similar to the sharing option, by completely avoiding it through a dialogue choice earlier in the game.
The scene between Katherine and the other woman (another potential LI) is completely unneeded unless you explicitly want her to have lesbian sex (without the MC), so a dialogue flag that avoids this scene altogether would have been the wiser choice. It does nothing but serve as a trigger for the lesbian sex. The inclusion feels very off.
What's even worse is that shortly after a similar scene plays that is meant to trigger the threesome scene, which once again feels completely out of character and should never have been included and made entirely avoidable through a dialogue choice.
But it's a minor nitpick since technically speaking you can have both the MC and Katherine entirely faithful to each other throughout the game. It's just that the scenes that would eventually trigger the lesbian/threesome content feel entirely wrong and out of character if you are on the faithful solo path and even disabled the sharing option early in the game.
One thing I didn't like at all is the forced anal sex on the Katherine route, I cannot say if the other love interests have similar forced scenes. I can't understand why developers make these things unavoidable, even more so here because after the first 2 or 3 forced scenes the other scenes almost always (with one exception!) DO have choices for everything and allow you to avoid it altogether.
These things should always be entirely optional and never ever be the default, opt in is ok, not being able to opt out is one of the cardinal sins of so many VNs, it's unfortunate that Deliverance drops the ball here a bit.
It's nothing major, you usually don't even see anything really in the forced anal sex scenes since the camera angle chosen could also easily be used for normal vaginal doggystyle penetration, which makes it even more puzzling why the few scenes are mandatory to begin with. I would assume that people who enjoy anal sex may not find the included scenes with Katherine all that exciting even, since you don't really see anything. So why include it in the first place and make it mandatory? That was a very odd choice.
Apart from that Deliverance offers plenty of choice, you can be the hero, you can be a villain, you can get 8 different endings, I got the Katherine solo ending of course which was quite romantic and gives you all the resolution you want. So you do get a proper conclusion and a happily ever after with her. The ending is also not rushed.
There are also endings of course for the other love interests, but I never saw them and I probably won't replay the game to see those scenes, since the other love interests do not interest me as romantic partners for the MC.
So if you are into story focused VNs with top production values and a good number of sex scenes even on a solo path then Deliverance is absolutely worth playing. It's a top tier VN that is several levels above most other VNs concerning story, dialogue, character depth and presentation.
Deliverance also allows you to have a wholesome solo romance that doesn't punish you with a lack of content for doing so, which is always very welcome. But you can also go for a more corrupted or evil route and cheat on your wife with various other females, or share Katherine with other men and women (with the option to eventually separate from your wife) if that is more to your liking.
In many ways Deliverance is a 5 star VN, but forced kinks (anal) and the somewhat over the top demon wants to rule the world story in the second half make it a 4 star game for me. But Deliverance is mostly a 5 star experience and one of the rare completed VN and thus absolutely worth playing.
Only if you usually use the CTRL key to skip to the animations or prefer more varied kinks then Deliverance is probably not your thing, since the focus here is not the sex and what there is is mostly vanilla and wholesome with a few exceptions here and there, more so on the evil path.
